Unless otherwise indicated herein, the description in this section is not prior art to the claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
There is known a configuration that locates a moveable carriage below a platen on which a document of a reading target is placed, as a typical image processing apparatus, such as a copier, a facsimile, a scanner, and a multi-functional peripheral. Such an image processing apparatus can read an image of a document placed on a platen with its image-reading target surface placed toward the platen, by moving a carriage. An image processing apparatus employs a document feeder to read images of a plurality of documents in a high speed. The document feeder automatically feeds a document loaded in a document tray one by one to an image reading position. This ensures that the image processing apparatus can continuously read each document.
A document feeder is often integrally constituted with a platen cover that opens and closes a platen. When a document is left on a platen, an image processing apparatus including such a document feeder broadly employs a configuration where an image reading position of a document, which is conveyed by the document feeder, is set outside a document placing range of the platen for preventing a damage or similar problem caused by contact between a document conveyed by the document feeder and the left document. Such image processing apparatus locates a slit glass (a reading glass) corresponding to the image reading position of the document feeder. This slit glass is located spaced apart from the platen.
For example, when the documents are present both on a document feeder and on a platen, there is known an image reading apparatus that enables a user to set preliminarily priority on which document to read. This configuration enables the image reading apparatus to continuously read images even when a paper document is mixed with documents that can be placed on a document feeder and cannot be placed on a document feeder.
Further, when the documents, which are placed both on a document feeder and on a platen, are situated, there is known an image reading apparatus that causes a user to select which images of the documents to read. This configuration ensures that the image reading apparatus executes image reading of the document that the user desires.